Xi’s activities reported on by state media

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping ... his disappearance from the public eye has provoked increasing speculation.
Photo: AFP

The activities of China’s next leader, Xi Jinping, who has not been seen in public for 11 days, have been reported on by the state-run media for the first time since September 1, signalling the Communist Party may be countering speculation his absence would disrupt a transfer of power.

Bloomberg cites a report in today’s Guangxi Daily that says Mr Xi, who is forecast to become China’s next president and general secretary of the party in a leadership change later this year, joined other top Chinese officials in sending condolences to the family of a party member who died on September 6.

“It is a sign by the top leadership to reassure the world that nothing excessively bad or disruptive has happened to Xi Jinping," Bloomberg quoted an adjunct professor of history at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Willy Wo-Lap Lam, as saying. “Of course this doesn’t allay people’s suspicions about whether he will be a physically fit general secretary."

A source told The Daily Telegraph that China’s next leader, Xi Jinping, has not been seen in public for 11 days because he has suffered a heart attack.

Mr Xi is expected to be unveiled as the leader of the Communist Party in the coming weeks, but his disappearance from the public eye has provoked increasing speculation.

“Although people have said he suffered a back injury, he actually had a heart attack, a myocardial infarction," said Li Weidong, a political commentator in Beijing and the former editor of China Reform. The magazine is influential among Chinese policymakers and under the aegis of the National Development and Reform Commission.

Other unnamed sources have also suggested that Mr Xi, 59, suffered a heart attack, while Willy Lam, the former editor of the South China Morning Post, believes China’s president-in-waiting had a stroke and is unable to be seen in public.

Mr Xi has not been spotted since September 1 and cancelled a series of meetings with foreign leaders, including one with Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, on September 4. The Communist Party has remained tight-lipped about his situation. For the third day in a row, the foreign ministry batted away questions at its daily press conference. A spokesman merely said: “I have no information."

Related Quotes

Company Profile

Mr Li said that Mr Xi’s illness was not severe enough to disrupt the 18th Party Congress, at which China will unveil its first set of new leaders in 10 years. The date of the Congress has not been announced, but most observers believe it will occur in mid-October.

“I heard the agenda for the Congress will not be changed, which means that Mr Xi will have recovered beforehand," he said. Other sources have also indicated that, so far, plans for the Congress have not been affected.

However, since the 1990s, the Communist Party has typically given at least a month’s notice before a Congress. If there is no announcement this week, it could indicate that this year’s event has been postponed.

In the vacuum of information, other rumours spread yesterday that Mr Xi was, in fact, perfectly healthy but hard at work. A magazine in Hong Kong, iSun Affairs, said a relation of Mr Xi’s had sent a text message indicating that “all is well".

Fan Jinggang, the manager of the “Leftist" Utopia forum, which espouses the ideas of Chairman Mao, said a “reliable source" had told him that “Mr Xi is in good health". Mr Fan blamed the fevered rumours in Beijing on a foreign media bent on stirring up controversy.

At the 301 Military Hospital in Beijing, the facility that often treats top leaders, there was no sign of any extra security. Staff said they had not noticed any unusual activity and that they did not know if Mr Xi was in the compound.

Another rumour had suggested Mr Xi’s absence might be linked to reports that the Communist Party’s discipline chief, He Guoqiang, had failed to turn up at a series of meetings last week, the South China Morning Post reported.

But Mr He reappeared in public yesterday in footage shown in television news reports, the newspaper said.